


Complications

by M_Monoceros



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF
Genre: Bad and Inaccurate Medical Jargon, Blood and Gore, I know nothing about anything, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Medical Inaccuracies, Self-Harm, The Med School AU From Hell, Whump, especially medical school, medical gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-08-14 00:56:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16483019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/M_Monoceros/pseuds/M_Monoceros
Summary: So they'd hooked up once, and for some reason that made Timmy trust Armie enough to ask for his help. But if someone had told Armie that night that one day he would be standing over a makeshift hospital bed up to his elbows in Timmy's blood, he would have laughed in that person's face.Life was kind of funny that way.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What is this? Who knows. Someone said the words "Charmie Med Student AU" to me months ago and I slipped into a strange fugue state and woke up to this.
> 
> And yeah, I think it goes without saying, but I am not a doctor and have never been to medical school. I basically took all of the jargon I learned from House MD and that Doctor Mike guy on Youtube, stuck it in a blender and cobbled it together into something vaguely legible. I did honestly try to do my research, but the basic premise is insane anyways so who knows if that paid off at all.
> 
> Oh and the opening scene is a direct ripoff of American Mary, a fun and spooky film that you should definitely go watch. :) This isn't finished yet, so I'm not going to stick to any kind of schedule and will just upload as I go.
> 
> Happy Halloween! :))

> “As to diseases, make a habit of two things—to help, or at least, to do no harm.”
> 
> —Hippocrates, _Epidemics, Book I, Ch. 2_

Someone was staring at him.

Armie could feel eyes on the back of his neck, pricking his skin like needles. He stole a glance across the auditorium, and yep—the guy wasn’t even trying to hide it. He was just… staring.

Dark hair, dark eyes, hood pulled up hiding half his face. What was his name? He looked familiar; they must’ve worked together on a group project, or Armie had run into him once at a party or something.

Armie tried to focus on the lecture, but he’d stayed up too late the night before and he hadn’t had enough coffee and the heat of the guy’s gaze was burning the back of his neck. So he turned in his seat and stared back.

Instead of looking away, the guy just smirked.

“Mr. Hammer.”

Armie whipped around to find Dr. Chambers—and the entire lecture hall—staring at him.

“Yes professor?”

Dr. Chambers leaned back against her desk and folded her arms. There was an image of blood platelets on the projector behind her, and the glow from the screen bathed her in sickly red. “Since your listening skills are so adept,” she said, “perhaps you can tell me how many molecules of oxygen a molecule of hemoglobin can hold in the blood for transport.”

“Four,” Armie answered. _Too easy._

“And hemoglobin is _what?”_

“The iron-containing oxygen-transport metalloprotein in the red blood cells of vertebrates.”

“Anywhere else?”

“In the tissues of some invertebrates.”

Dr. Chambers raised one perfectly-penciled eyebrow. “I understand you may not find this topic particularly thrilling,” she said coolly, “but as a future surgeon, the things I’m teaching you now may very well save someone’s life.”

Armie nodded.

“I trust you’ll pay attention in my class, Mr. Hammer.” Her voice had softened, and Armie could see the corners of her mouth twitching.

“Yes ma’am, I’m sorry,” he said, flashing an apologetic smile for good measure.

“Now, back to where we left off: transfusions…”

When Armie snuck a glance back over his shoulder, the guy was staring steadfastly down at his notebook.

*

Armie stayed behind to talk to Dr. Chambers, so by the time they left the lecture hall the building was almost empty. Except, it turned out, for the guy who had been staring at him, who was sitting in the hallway outside with his knees pulled up to his chest. He scrambled to his feet as soon as he saw Armie.

“Uh, hi,” Armie said.

“Mr. Chalamet,” Liz said with a nod.

“Hi doctor,” the guy said, smiling broadly. It was a weird smile, one that didn’t quite reach his eyes. He turned to Armie. “Can I talk to you?”

“Uh,” Armie said.

“You don’t mind, do you?” he asked Dr. Chambers.

She blinked. “Not at all. I’ll see you both on Monday.”

“Sure thing,” the guy said with a nod. Armie nodded, too, because he couldn’t exactly do anything else with him standing right there. He waited until Dr Chambers was out of earshot before he spoke.

“What do you want?”

“Yeah, uh. I need your help with something..”

“What? Sorry, who are you? This is literally the first time we’ve ever spoken...”

The guy stared at him. “Timothée. _Timmy._ You don’t remember me?”

“I mean, I know we’re in the same lecture, but…”

Timmy shook his head with an incredulous laugh. “Wow, uh. We’ve had classes together for two fucking years, man. You know who I am.”

“I really don’t.”

“Okay, ouch.” Timmy ran a hand over his face with a sigh. He chewed his lip and stared at the floor, thinking. Then he took a deep breath. “Let’s try this again. You don’t know who I am? That’s fine. _I_ know who _you_ are: Armie Hammer, star student. Highest GPA in our year, right? But you’re good at the practical stuff, too—you’ve shadowed Dr. Guadagnino. Even done a surgery or two yourself, right? And you look like _that,_ which is just… really not fucking fair.” Timmy laughed, but his voice sounded strained, and now that Armie as closer he could see how tired he looked. Like he hadn’t slept in days. Unease gnawed at Armie’s stomach.

“So?” he asked uncertainly.

“So… I need your professional opinion.”

“On what?”

“A case.”

“A _case?”_ Armie echoed.

“Just a hypothetical,” he said quickly. “My study group does them sometimes, like a challenge. But we can’t figure this one out, so.” Timmy offered him a wry smile, and okay, maybe Armie _did_ remember him a little bit.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Okay, shoot.”

Timmy shook his head. “I can’t ask you here.”

“Why not?”

“I have like… x-rays and stuff. Charts. Back at my place, if you, uh... maybe want to come over.”

Armie sized him up. He was tall, but still shorter than Armie, and a lot thinner. “Tonight?”

“Yeah. It’s kind of urgent.”

“I don’t know, dude; I have to study.”

“Totally, totally, yeah…” Timmy rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. “It’s just. I bet them I could come up with an answer by tomorrow.”

He looked up at Armie through his lashes, which were impossibly long and dark, and for some reason Armie felt himself nod. “Sure, why not. Just… make it fast.”

Timmy grinned. “Awesome.”

*

Timmy lived just off campus in a tiny, rundown studio apartment. The walls were almost bare except for a few worn posters, and he’d stacked a pyramid of empty glass bottles in the window as some kind of makeshift decoration. When he switched on the lamp on his cluttered desk, the light was barely enough to read by.

Armie hung back in the doorway as he shuffled the papers on his desk around until he found what he was looking for. He passed a folder to Armie.

“Patient?”

“White male in his 50s. Procedure was a partial hepatectomy three months ago. Everything went smoothly; x-rays confirm no leakage or bleeding, except now the patient is presenting with extreme abdominal pain, fatigue, and fever. Dizziness, nausea, loss of appetite.

“Infection,” Armie said simply.

“No.” Timmy flipped through the pages in Armie’s hands until he got to a blood panel. “CMP came back normal.”

“They don’t always show up right away.”

“It’s not an infection; the patient’s half way through a course of IVs with no improvement.”

“Hm.” Armie turned to the x-rays. “Looks like there’s a… a mass? There.” He pointed to a cloudy area just beside the liver.

“Yeah, we noticed that.”

Armie brought the sheet to his face, studying it closely. “Is that a… tumour? Scar tissue?”

“Some kind of swelling,” Timmy said.

“And the pain is localized to the incision site?”

“Yes and no. Patient also developed a rash resembling contact dermatitis.”

“An allergy, then.”

“To what?”

“I don’t know—medication? Sutures?”

Timmy was shaking his head. “We ruled those out. So, how would you treat him?”

Armie sat down in Timmy’s desk chair, flipping through the folder absently. “I’d need to see the patient.”

“Okay, but we _can’t_ see the patient,” Timmy explained. “This is a hypothetical.”

Armie narrowed his eyes. “What kind of study group is this? You guys just do this stuff for fun?”

“For practice, yeah.”

Practice? With the amount of studying they had on a daily basis, Armie couldn’t fathom adding anything extra on top of that—even if it was just hypotheticals.

“Okay,” Armie said slowly. “Another course of antibiotics. Prednisone for the rash—”

“Done and done,” Timmy said impatiently. “Pain and fever persist.”

Armie looked back at the x-rays, and his eyes immediately returned to the patch of cloudy white. “This is bugging me,” he said, tapping it. “If he was in good enough condition, I’d open the guy back up and take a look.”

“We tried that.”

Armie huffed. “You should have told me that before.”

“I wanted to see if you’d get to the same place we did.”

“So what did you find?”

Timmy ran a hand through his hair, fiddling with a curl. “Nothing, really. A lot of inflammation.”

“The liver?”

“Was fine, except for the swelling. The sutures held.”

Armie hummed thoughtfully. “Liver function?”

Timmy pointed at the blood panel. “Slightly compromised.”

“Could you have missed something? Inflammation like that can be a motherfucker. How thorough were you?”

“Well, the patient’s blood pressure started dropping and we had to close him up, so probably not that thorough.”

“Okay.” Armie flipped the folder closed decisively. “So yeah, maybe a full exploratory was too much. Stabilize the patient, put him on IV fluids, up the steroids to reduce the swelling as much as possible, and make triple sure there’s no infection. Then a laparoscopy.”

Timmy sat on his bed, which was actually just a mattress on the floor, and laid back with a long sigh. “My study group is going to hate that answer.”

“Well, it’s the right one,” Armie said, sounding more confident than he felt.

“Have you ever dealt with anything like that?”

“Kind of, once. I got to to shadow Dr. Guadagnino on a patient that had a bad reaction to a hip implant. Symptoms were kind of like this… fever, rash. Some weird neurological stuff too. When we went in there it was a huge mess—tons of swelling and the metal had corroded so badly it just looked like brown sludge. It was a bitch to clean up…”

“Hmm.” Timmy was staring at the ceiling, eyes unfocused, and for the first time Armie noticed exactly how skinny he was. He was pale, too, and his skin had a slightly waxy quality. “Do you think you could do this one?”

“Probably,” Armie said. “I don’t know. I thought this was hypothetical.”

“Yeah,” Timmy said absently. “Hey, do you want something to drink?”

Armie glanced at the clock on his phone. True to Timmy’s word, diagnostics had only taken a few minutes. “Sure. Coffee?” Timmy shot him a pitying look, and Armie laughed. “What?”

“Nothing,” Timmy said with a smirk. He left and returned a few minutes later with two steaming cups. He passed one to Armie, who almost gagged when he brought it to his lips.

“Holy fuck—what _is_ that?”

“Instant coffee and vodka.”

“That’s fucking disgusting,” Armie said with a shudder.

Timmy shrugged. “You get used to it,” he said, and Armie watched him take a long sip.

*

To his credit, Timmy was right: after a couple mugs of the concoction, Armie’s mouth went numb and he couldn’t really taste anything, let alone feel the burn of the cheap vodka.

“The Dizz is pretty good too,” Timmy was saying, because Armie had mentioned he never went out and Timmy had taken it upon himself to recommend him a list of bars near the campus. They were both sitting on the mattress now, leaning back against the wall. “Good fish ‘n’ chips, and karaoke on Thursdays.”

“You do karaoke?”

“What, is that weird?”

“I mean, no. You’re just so quiet, I can’t really picture it.”

“Why do you think I’m quiet?”

“I don’t know. I never really notice you in class.”

“That’s probably ‘cause I never go to class. Well, almost never.”

“And they haven’t kicked you out yet?”

“Why would they? I do my shifts at the hospital and I’ve got a 3.8.”

Armie nearly choked on his drink. “Wait, seriously? And you still manage to go to bars and stuff?”

Timmy shrugged. “I read the textbook.”

Armie shook his head, which felt a little fuzzy. “You know I have a 3.9, right? And I barely ever leave my room. Jesus. You must be a genius or something...”

Another shrug. “It’s not like I don’t study. And I don’t really sleep, so…”

Armie laughed, and Timmy laughed too, and _yes,_ Armie definitely knew him from somewhere besides class or the hospital, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember where.

The case file was sitting on the bed next to Timmy, and he patted it sadly. “I think this guy’s gonna die.”

“No dude—do the laparoscopy,” Armie insisted. “Inflammation fucks everything up—you probably just missed something. Maybe a stitch came undone, or there’s bleeding you didn’t find the first time. And if that doesn’t work, then there’s literally no right answer.” Armie pulled the folder towards himself. “Who gave you this case, anyways?”

“We uh… we kind of just decide on them as a group.”

“Yeah, but who has the answers?” Armie studied the blood report more closely. The requisition was by a Dr. Ronan, dated a few days ago. Why did that name sound familiar? Before he could read any further, Timmy grabbed the folder out of his hands.

“Maybe there isn’t a right answer; maybe the guy’s just supposed to die. That’s a good lesson, right?”

“Maybe.” Armie rolled over onto his back and stared up at the ceiling, which was spinning. “Hey, why haven’t you ever talked to me before?”

Silence. Armie could feel Timmy’s eyes on him again, and when he turned to look, he found that Timmy’s face was a lot closer than he remembered. He’d taken off his hood, exposing his tangled curls. His hair was a little greasy, like he hadn’t showered in a couple days.

“You really don’t remember me, do you?” Timmy asked.

“I do,” Armie admitted. “Well, kind of. Did we do a presentation together or something?”

Timmy let out a short, breathy laugh. “No. Alpha Delta Phi party last year—ring any bells?”

Armie frowned. There was something there—a vague recollection. “Was it… was it a Halloween party?”

“That’s the one.”

Okay, Armie _did_ remember that: he’d gone with his girlfriend at the time, who had gone as Sexy Little Red Riding Hood and dressed him in a bad polyester wolf costume. The fake fur had been sweaty and uncomfortable at first, but after a few drinks Armie barely noticed.

“Uh huh,” Armie said slowly, then made a face. “I got pretty fucked up that night.”

“Yeah. We both did.” Timmy was staring at him again, waiting for him to get somewhere that Armie’s brain didn’t seem to want to let him go.

“Wait. Were you… were you wearing… a body bag?”

Timmy snorted. “You _do_ remember. Yeah, that was Ansel’s idea.”

 _Ansel._ The name rang another bell. “Ansel?” Like, the kid who…”

Timmy winced.

“Sorry,” Armie said quickly. “I didn’t know you guys were friends.”

“Since first year.”

Armie knew who Ansel Elgort was because _everyone_ knew who Ansel Elgort was. One of the brightest; one of the best: a charming, studious kid who had somehow ended up dead in a burnt-out car, body so charred they had to use dental records to ID the body. It had only been a month since they’d found him.

“Sorry,” Armie said awkwardly.

“It’s fine.” Timmy was chewing his lip, staring at the opposite wall. His cheeks were flushed. He took another long sip of his coffee, and Armie watched the muscles in his throat move.

_Body bags._

Flashes of the party came back to him all at once: dancing. Plastic. Jägermeister. He’d met Timmy in line for the bathroom and they’d started talking. By the time it was their turn they were alone and they’d both gone in together, for some reason, and Armie had unzipped the body bag and—

 _“Oh._ You. We—"

“Yeah,” Timmy said. He was watching Armie warily, but Armie didn’t make any move to sit up or leave or whatever Timmy probably expected him to do. He just lay there, trying to make the ceiling stay still.

“I guess I blocked that out,” he said after a while. Timmy snorted.

“Thanks. That feels great.”

“I’m not gay.”

“Believe it or not, I don’t actually care,” Timmy said blandly. “I didn’t invite you over because I had… ulterior motives, or anything. I just knew you’re good at this stuff. I’ve been watching you for a while.”

Armie pulled himself up, joining Timmy in his position against the wall. Yes, Armie was definitely drunk. He’d only had two coffees, right? Maybe he was more of a lightweight than he thought.

“You’ve been watching me?”

Timmy’s lips twitched. “It’s kind of hard not to.” His eyes were closed, and Armie watched his eyelashes flutter against his cheeks. How were they so long? Like a girl’s. In fact, Timmy in general was extremely pretty. That was probably why Armie had hooked up with him at that party. Probably also why he couldn’t stop staring at his mouth now.

Without thinking about it, Armie reached over and placed a finger on Timmy’s bottom lip. Timmy opened his mouth, and Armie slipped his finger inside, hooking it on Timmy’s bottom teeth, pulling his mouth open wider.

They looked at each other. _Soft,_ Armie thought, and then Timmy leaned over and kissed him.

Armie let his mind go blank, enjoying the way their mouths fit together. He was a little bit more sober than he had been the last time they’d done this, but still drunk enough to ward off the guilt he knew was sitting in the back of his mind, waiting for the light of day. He would deal with it in the morning.

Timmy shifted himself closer, and Armie took his face in both of his hands. Timmy palmed Armie’s crotch, but his movements were fumbling and clumsy and Armie chuckled. “How much of that shit did you have?”

“Shut up,” Timmy muttered. “‘M tired.”

“Uh huh. Here…” Armie moved so that he was straddling Timmy’s thighs. This way Timmy didn’t have to do anything but sit there. Armie’s hands moved to the clasp of Timmy’s pants, and he must have leaned in too hard or at the wrong angle or something because Timmy’s face twisted in a sudden spasm of pain.

“Shit, sorry,” Armie hissed, but Timmy just shook his head and pulled him in for another kiss. Armie tried to sink into it again—to just shut his brain off—but something was wrong. Was Timmy crying? His face felt wet and his breath was ragged. And maybe it was just the residual bitterness of the coffee and vodka, but something tasted _off_. Armie drew back to look at him and the bottom dropped out of his stomach.

“Holy fuck.”

Timmy’s mouth was bleeding. Or or at least, _something_ was bleeding, but either way there was way too fucking much blood and it seemed to be coming from his mouth.

Timmy tried to say something that turned into a cough, which turned into a heave, and more blood bubbled past his lips. Armie felt a few droplets land on his face. He scrambled back off of the bed, and without Armie there to prop him up, Timmy slumped sideways. He groaned and brought his knees to his chest.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, _fuck,”_ Armie hissed. He crouched over Timmy and put a hand on his shoulder. “Timmy, can you hear me? Did you take something? What the fuck…”

“It’s fine,” Timmy croaked, trying to push him away.

“Like fuck it is! You’re coughing up _blood_ —”

“I’m not—” He pulled himself back upright, wincing in pain. He brought a hand to his mouth, then studied the blood on his fingers. “Fuck.”

“Timmy, what the hell—”

Timmy tried to get up, but his face twisted in pain again and his arm flew to his stomach. He leaned back against the wall again, breathing hard. “Pass me my phone.”

Armie hesitated.

“I’m okay,” Timmy insisted, which seemed like it was probably a lie. “I just need to call someone.”

Armie pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. “I’m too fucking drunk for this.”

And yeah, Armie should _definitely_ get actual medical assistance, but Timmy seemed so sure of himself. He picked up Timmy’s phone from the desk.

“Thank you,” Timmy said. “Can you dial?”

“What’s your passcode?”

Timmy told him, and Armie punched it in. He found the number TImmy told him quickly under the name "Sersh." A woman answered on the second ring.

“Timmy?”

“Uh, no. I’m a… friend of Timmy’s. He’s—”

“Is he all right? Where are you?” she demanded. She sounded Irish.

“He’s…” Armie looked over at Timmy, who had closed his eyes again. The blood on his face was smeared all the way down his neck, and a dark trickle was still dripping from the corner of his mouth. Armie could still see his chest rising and falling, even though the movement was shallow.

“Tell her I’m okay,” Timmy said without opening his eyes.

“He just told me to tell you he’s okay, but he really doesn’t seem okay. He’s like… bleeding a lot?”

Silence on the other end. “From where?”

“His mouth. Wait. Where else would he—”

“Did you call anyone else?”

“No—”

“Put Timmy on the phone.”

“She wants to talk to you,” Armie said. Timmy made a vague noise of assent, so Armie held the phone up to his ear.

“Uh huh,” Timmy said after a minute. “Yeah, probably. No. No. _Yes.”_ He paused to cough again, and a bit more blood dripped down his chin. “Don’t call Daniel,” he said, then pushed the phone away.

Armie brought the phone to his ear, but Saoirse had hung up.

“You don’t have to stay,” Timmy said.

“Are you fucking kidding me? I’m not leaving you alone like this.”

“Saoirse will be here soon.”

“Good. I’m still staying.”

Armie didn’t know what to do, so he sat down beside Timmy and watched him breathe. Watching made him feel like he had some kind of control, because if he was watching, he’d be able to tell if Timmy got worse.

“Stop staring at me,” Timmy mumbled at one point, but Armie ignored him.

In his head, Armie went down the list of things he knew would cause someone to bleed like that. The most concerning things were also the things he couldn’t rule out. He studied the flush on Timmy’s cheek, the damp curls on his forehead, the way Timmy was sitting, trying to diagnose him through sheer willpower alone. Was he asleep? Unconscious? Timmy’s hand was pressed to his stomach just below his sternum, the fabric of his shirt spattered with a few drops of blood…

Armie blinked. Not just a few drops: a large, splotchy stain, seeping out from under Timmy’s hand. Holding his breath, Armie lifted it up. A flicker of pain crossed Timmy’s face, but he didn’t resist. Gently, Armie pulled up his shirt, and was met with—

Gauze. Lots of gauze. He frowned. The bandages were loose, and he barely had to touch them before they were coming away in his hands.

 _Blood. Bruises. Stitches._ A deep incision ran across Timmy’s stomach, just below his ribcage. A gruesome checkmark. The flesh around it was swollen and dark; a deep, mottled purple.

Abruptly, Timmy stiffened; his eyes flew open and he shoved Armie away, but the damage had been done.

Armie knew that incision.

“What the hell is going on?”

Timmy groaned and buried his face in his hands. “I really wish you hadn’t done that,” he said, his voice muffled.

“Is that… Did you have… fucking... _liver_ surgery?” It felt like there was something crawling up Armie’s spine, trying to burrow into his skin. His eyes fell on the folder on the bed, and he picked it up. “Is this _you?”_

The question was absurd for a number of reasons. The first of which was that healthy 20-somethings just didn’t have surgery like that. But there were only two dots—the case file and the incision—and Armie’s brain couldn’t help connecting them.

Timmy laughed breathlessly. “Why would I have a partial hepatectomy, Armie?”

“That’s a really good fucking question. But if you did, then you need to see a doctor. Is this an insurance thing?”

“It’s not an insurance thing,” Timmy mumbled.

“Oh, okay. Good. Then I’m taking you to urgent care.” He made to pull Timmy up by the shoulders, but Timmy stiffened.

“No.”

“Dude, you’re _coughing up blood,_ of course I’m going to take you to urgent care, you’re probably having a… a pulmonary embolism, or hemorrhage, or I-don’t-fucking-know what, but it’s not good and I’m too drunk for this and you need to go to the hospital right fucking now—”

“It’s not my lungs. Armie. I promise. It’s my esophagus, and I’m not… I’m not going to die. Okay? Saoirse will—”

“What are you talking about?”

“I have an ulcer,” Timmy explained calmly. “It’s probably bleeding.”

Armie closed his eyes and tried to steady himself. When he opened them again, Timmy was staring at him intently. Warily, like Armie was a rabid dog that might lash out at any minute.

“Timmy—”

Armie nearly jumped out of his skin when the door opened.

“Oh. _You,”_ Saoirse said when she saw Armie. It took a minute for him to recognize her: they’d done a few volunteer shifts at the hospital together, though now he realized he’d never actually bothered learning her name. She looked different now than she did at work: her eyes were ringed with smudged black eyeliner and her face was covered in piercings. “Am I interrupting something?” she asked, looking back and forth between them.

“No,” Armie said tightly. Saoirse studied him for a minute, then brushed past him. She was carrying a large backpack, and she set it down on the bed. Armie watched her pull on a pair of black latex gloves.

“C’mere,” she said to Timmy, and helped him shuffle to the edge of the bed. She paused. “Are you fucking _drunk?”_

In answer, Timmy leaned past her and vomited onto the floor. Except it wasn’t normal vomit, because it was red—every shade, from bright rust to muted purple to tar black. And fuck, there was a lot of it.

“You fucking idiot,” Saoirse muttered.

“Is he going to be okay?” Armie asked weakly.

Saoire glanced at him over her shoulder. “Sorry, why are you here again?”

“I was just—”

“That was a rhetorical question. You should go.”

“Timmy?” Armie asked, half-pleading.

“Sorry,” Timmy mumbled, and Armie deflated.

Saoirse glared at him. “Leave.”

Armie didn’t bother arguing. He took one last look over his shoulder before he left, but Timmy didn’t meet his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... thoughts?


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the love on the last chapter! Welcome back to another instalment of "Marble tries to write an episode of House." I sincerely hope no one with actual medical training is reading this fic. :)) 
> 
> Just a short one today...

Timmy wasn’t in class on Monday. Armie spent most of the lecture glancing back over his shoulder whenever Dr. Chambers wasn’t looking, hoping that maybe he was just sitting in a different seat than normal. But he was nowhere to be found. 

Then again, Timmy had said he wasn’t in class that much in general, so maybe he was playing hooky for completely legitimate reasons that didn’t involve dying. Not that he necessarily _was_ dying. He was just, you know, _bleeding_ profusely. From his esophagus and _not_ the grisly wound in his abdomen, if Timmy was to be believed. But any way you sliced it, the incision had looked bad. Spectacularly bad...

“You good, mate?”

Armie looked up to find Dev frowning at him from across the table. 

“Yeah. All good.”

“Really? Cause you’ve been like that for about five minutes.”

Armie looked at the half sandwich in his hand, which he had raised to his mouth but forgotten to eat. He put it down with a sigh. They were sitting at their favourite spot in the back of the library cafe, the table between them strewn with books and their computers.

Armie ran a hand over his face. “Have you ever heard of ulcers bleeding?”

Dev blinked. “Yeah, sure. That’s definitely a thing.”

“But like, bleeding _a lot.”_

Dev pulled up his laptop and punched something in. “How much is ‘a lot’?”

“I don’t know… Enough for you to cough it up.” 

“Well, you wouldn’t cough it up,” Dev said logically. “You’d vomit it up.” 

“Sure, whatever.” 

Dev turned back to his computer. _“Rapid bleeding from an ulcer is a life-threatening event,”_ he read aloud. _“If you have these symptoms, seek immediate medical attention.”_

Armie’s stomach writhed unpleasantly. “That’s all it says?” 

“Good ol’ Dr. Google: when in doubt, you’re definitely dying. Why are you asking about ulcers?” 

“Dr. Guadagnino mentioned a patient who came in with one,” Armie lied quickly. “I was just curious.” 

Dev narrowed his eyes. They had been friends since first year, roommates since second, and Dev definitely knew Armie well enough to know when something was up. But he also knew when to leave things alone, so he only shrugged and turned back to the notes he’d been taking. “What happened to the patient?” he asked absently.

“I don’t know.” 

“Well, if they were already at the hospital, I’m sure they made it out alive. Ulcers aren’t too serious in the grand scheme of things, are they? Even the bloody ones.” 

The incision on Timmy’s stomach flashed before Armie’s eyes, and he fought back a wave of nausea. “Well, he had surgery a few months ago. A partial hepatectomy.” 

“Yeah, okay, that’s a bit worse.” 

“Do you think those things are related?” 

Dev leaned back in his chair, stroking his beard thoughtfully. He’d grown it the previous November to raise money for cancer research, and had never shaved it off. Armie kind of hated how well he could pull off the _scruffy_ look. “Blood thinners, maybe? Was this guy on anything like that?” 

“No. Well, I don’t know. I don’t think so. But decreased liver function affects clotting, right?”

“Right,” Dev said, nodding. “I’ll bet that’s it.” 

Armie stared down at his textbook, not really absorbing any of the words. He should have taken Timmy to the hospital—he shouldn't have listened to him. What if he actually _was_ in danger? Armie needed to talk to him again. To make sure he was okay. 

He opened his laptop and looked Timmy up on Facebook. His last name was distinctive, so it was easy enough to find him. His profile was pretty bare—or at least he had his settings pretty private—and he could only see a couple profile pictures. He sent a friend request and clicked through them anyways. One blurry shot of Timmy at a party, drink in hand, smirking at the camera. One of Timmy with shorter hair, sitting in a park somewhere. His face looked less angular, like he was actually eating three square meals a day. And then a group shot: Timmy, Saoirse, one man Armie didn’t know, and one he did. 

Ansel Elgort.

Armie recognized him instantly. His face had been everywhere for the weeks leading up to when they found his body, plastered around the campus on every telephone pole and corkboard, and then plastered all over the news.

The people in the photo were all staring at the camera with the same smug expression, like they knew something Armie didn’t. The picture had been posted almost exactly one year ago. 

Armie clicked through to Ansel’s profile. 

His settings weren’t as private as Timmy’s, so Armie could see most of his photos. Which was weird, because he was fucking _dead—_ there were about 500 posts on his wall from grieving friends and family hammering this particular point home. 

The idea of leaving behind a social media ghost freaked Armie out. Smiling photos, no hint of anything amiss except Auntie Gayle’s tearful emoji condolences. He scrolled through Ansel’s pictures. The guy seemed kind of boring, if Armie was being completely honest. Too squeaky clean.

It didn’t take long for him to get to a photo of Ansel and Timmy, posted this past summer. They were sitting somewhere outside, and Timmy looked more like the Timmy that Armie had met on Friday: rail thin, long unkempt hair, oversized hoodie. He seemed out of place next to Ansel, who really had the preppy aesthetic down pat.

Armie went back to the group shot. Saoirse’s hair was different—light turquoise and not blonde—and she had about half the piercings she did now. Armie hovered over her face, and when her name appeared he experienced a strange sense of déjà vu. 

_Saoirse Ronan._

Armie blinked. A Dr. Ronan had ordered the blood work and x-rays Timmy showed him. But that couldn’t possibly be Saoirse… could it?

Armie pushed away a nagging sense of panic and broswed her profile. Even though there was nothing particularly interesting he sent her a friend request too, just for good measure. If he didn’t manage to get ahold of Timmy directly, maybe he could interrogate her as a last resort. Armie still remembered the way she’d looked at him: annoyance, but something else too. Panic? Fear? 

But what had she been afraid of?

He went back to Ansel’s profile and skimmed the posts on his wall, trying to piece together the puzzle. 

“Hey, d’you remember that guy who got murdered last month?” 

Dev looked up from his laptop. He was chewing on a blue pen, and the ink had started to bleed into the corner of his mouth. “Erm, yeah. Kinda hard to forget. Why?” 

“Whatever happened with that? Did they ever find the guy who did it?” 

“Don’t think so. But you probably know more about it than me.” 

Armie hummed. Thought of the way Timmy had flinched when he’d said Ansel’s name. “Not really.” 

*

At the hospital that evening, Armie immediately made a beeline for the schedule. Timmy wasn’t supposed to work for two days, but Saoirse was on in a couple of hours. 

Armie was only in third year, but he—along with most of his cohort—worked a few volunteer shifts a week at the teaching hospital downtown. It was mostly admin grunt work, but it was good preparation for the clerkships they would start soon—a good way to get the lay of the land, so to speak. Armie normally worked in emergency, because sometimes he had the chance to shadow surgeons like Dr. Guadagnino. 

Tonight, though, he wasn’t so lucky: he spent most of his shift running errands for nurses, and, at 9pm, cleaning up a very large pool of vomit from the emergency room floor. He kept his eyes open for Saoirse, but according to the schedule, she was working in the blood lab in a completely different part of the hospital. 

But there were other things he wanted to do besides interrogate her, and at nearly midnight his first opportunity came. 

“I’m sorry, sir, you’re looking for _what?”_

The head nurse craned her head over the counter while the elderly man in front of her was muttering something indistinct.

“I’m sorry—” 

“X-ray,” he said, a little louder, and pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket. 

The nurse sighed in relief. “Okay, so you’re going to take the elevator up to the third floor. Just go down the hall, to your right…” She trailed off, because the man was muttering again, gesturing frantically to the signs on the walls. 

“I’ll take him,” Armie said, springing up from behind the desk where he’d been organizing the file cabinet. 

Radiology was a ten minute walk, which turned into a twenty minute walk with Armie’s shuffling charge. But eventually they made it, and, to Armie’s relief, exactly the right person was on duty. 

“Dude!” Nick said when he saw Armie approaching. A nurse ushered the patient into a room just off the hallway, and as soon as he was out of sight Nick punched Armie’s shoulder gruffly.

“Hey man—how’s things?” 

“Oh, can’t complain. How’re you? How’s the, uh… love life?” Nick asked slyly. Armie had made the mistake of mentioning the last girl he’d startedseeing (if you could call it that), and now Nick brought it up every chance he got.

“That’s on pause for a while,” Armie said. 

Nick winked. “Uh huh.” 

Armie had known Nick since they’d done their undergrad together at Stanford. He’d always been more driven than Armie, and when Armie took a couple years off after his BSc, Nick went straight into radiology. So now he was here wearing a lab coat while Armie organized file cabinets. Not that Armie held it against him—he’d get to wear a white coat of his own soon enough. 

Armie looked around to make sure the waiting room was empty. He leaned in, and Nick followed his lead.

“Hey, uh. Can you do me a favour?” Armie asked. 

“A ‘favour’? That sounds suspicious and ill-advised.” 

“So, right up your alley?” 

Nick chuckled. “In here.” 

He led Armie into the office of the MRI room, separated from the machine by a thick pane of glass. It was empty at this time of night, the room dark except for a few flashing buttons, which lit everything with a ghostly blue glow. Nick reached into a drawer and pulled out two protein bars, and Armie took one gratefully. 

“What’s the favour?” Nick asked as they ate. 

“I was, uh. I was wondering if you I could see a patient file from a few days ago. Might have been last week.” 

Nick eyed him curiously. “Why?” 

“It’s a long story.” 

“I’m not gonna tattle on you.” 

“And that’s why I love you,” Armie said with a wry smile. “But I’m serious, dude: you can’t tell anyone anything. Okay?” 

“Cross my heart.” 

Armie took a deep breath. “So, yeah. I can’t tell you why, but I think someone requisitioned x-rays without authorization, and I need to see them.” 

“Why would anyone do that?” Nick asked.

Armie shook his head. “I don’t know for sure.” 

Nick finished his protein bar and slid into the chair at the desk. He booted up the computer, and the light from the monitor filled the dark room.

“What’s the doctor’s name?” 

“Ronan.” 

Nick shot him a dubious look. “There aren’t any Dr. Ronans at the hospital. Unless it’s a new guy...” 

“I know.”

Armie watched Nick check the records. He huffed. “I don’t know, man, I don’t think—oh shit. Hold on a sec.” 

“What?” 

“Yup, here it is: Dr. Ronan. Abdominal x-ray, ten days ago at… what the hell. At two in the morning. The lab’s closed then, except for an on-call tech.” 

“Pull up the file.” 

A familiar image filled the screen. Armie whistled under his breath. “Fuck me. That’s it.” 

The same outline. The same cloudy mass at the incision site. 

“Who is this?” Nick asked.

“It’s hard to explain.” He could, of course—he could lay everything out on the table and tell Nick exactly what had happened. What Timmy had said; what Armie had seen. But something held him back. “I need more information before I start pointing fingers,” Armie said carefully. “Do you have access to other records from here?” 

“Sure do. What do you need?” 

“Can you pull up every test run under that name?” 

Nick tapped a few keys. “Only three others. A blood panel from the same date as the x-ray, and one from… God damn it. It’s from _today._ Literally filed ten minutes ago.”

Nick opened the file and Armie leaned in, scanning quickly. “Can you print those off for me?”

“Yes sir.” The printer beside the desk whirred into life. “Anything else?” 

Armie chewed his lip, thinking. “That patient—John Smith, it says? Has he undergone any procedures in the last six months?” 

Nick typed the name into the database and hit enter. 

"Nope, nothing."

"Okay, try a different name. Try 'Timothée Chalamet.'"

Nick shot Armie a look, but punched it in anyways. 

_No results._

“Would records from other hospitals show up on here?” Armie asked. 

“Yeah, probably. Most of the hospitals in the state use the same system.”

Armie let out a long breath. “Fuck. Okay.”

“That all you need?”

“Yeah, for now. Just… don’t tell anyone about this yet, okay?” 

Nick nodded slowly. “Okay. But only because I trust you. And if this all blows up in my face… well. This better not blow up in my face.” 

“It won’t,” Armie said, sounding more certain than he felt. 

Armie picked up the printouts from the printer and held the blood panels up side by side. What he saw made his heart drop. 

The patient was the same—an alleged white male, 50 years old. But while liver function had been more or less 100 percent ten days ago, the latest numbers had taken a nosedive. 

Armie thought of the incision on Timmy’s stomach; purple and swollen. He looked at the x-ray again, comparing it to his memory. _It had to be the same._

He went back to the blood panel. The numbers weren’t just bad—they were abysmal. Definitely bad enough to cause clotting issues; even hemorrhaging. Even death. 

If this really was Timmy, then his liver was failing. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments give me life. 
> 
> If you like this fic, you can now [reblog the photoset.](http://peaches-n-crema.tumblr.com/post/179811049352/complications-so-theyd-hooked-up-once-and-for) And [there's a playlist!](https://open.spotify.com/user/esonyac/playlist/6pOx4dn5rMHAkNqia81bG1?si=XUZTU2oFSye77x1mvCUF9w) (Of course there's a playlist.)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Sometimes it’s not that easy. Sometimes the simplest explanation is the furthest from the truth.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I know this is insane. 
> 
> Please heed the new tags.

Armie didn’t go back to the emergency room. Instead, he took a detour to the basement. His brain was buzzing and he walked quickly, barely even registering what was going on around him. He kept going over Friday night, trying to make it all make _sense,_ but none of it did.

Timmy’s words kept coming back to him. _Maybe the guy’s just supposed to die,_ he’d said. _That’s a good lesson, right?_

The blood lab was made up of a series of rooms in the basement. There were no windows down here, though the overhead lights were blindingly bright. Armie felt exposed in only his worn green scrubs, but he held himself upright and tried to project an air of confidence. If you look like you knew what you were doing—like you were supposed to be somewhere—people almost never questioned you. 

When Armie slipped inside the first lab, six pairs of eyes turned on him immediately. Clothed in white jumpsuits, faces half-hidden by hospital masks. “Sorry,” Armie said, and hastily made his exit. He couldn’t be sure, but he didn’t think any of those eyes belonged to Saoirse. The next room he tried was empty. The third almost was, except for a small figure hunched over a computer at the back. Her shoulder twitched when Armie opened the door.

“I already sent the samples back,” she said, not looking up from her work. “I gave the forms to Dr. Martin, so—” 

“Good to know.”

Saoirse froze. She turned slowly in her seat. Her eyes darted to the folder held loosely at Armie’s side.

“What the fuck is going on?” Armie asked evenly. 

Saoirse looked vaguely ill. “I can’t do this without a drink.” 

“You don’t have a choice. This was you, wasn’t it _Dr. Ronan?”_ Armie set the folder down on the desk beside her. She eyed it warily, like it might explode at any second. 

“Are you going to turn me in?”

“I’m more worried about the patient.” Armie flipped the folder open to the two blood panels. “He’s tanking, isn’t he?”

Saoirse looked away. 

“You need to get him to the hospital. This one, any one, I don’t care.”

“It’s not that easy.” 

“Why the fuck not? Do you want him to die?”

“Armie—”

“Then tell me what the fuck is happening.”

Saoirse glared at him. She shook her head. “I can’t.”

“You can. And you will. Or, yeah, I _will_ turn you in. I’ll call the police; tell them Timmy’s in danger. It _is_ Timmy, isn’t it?”

Her silence was all the answer Armie needed. 

“Saoirse. Come on. I don’t know what happened, but—”

“He won’t listen to me,” she said quietly. she was chewing on her fingers, staring off into space. “I told him it would be bad. But he won’t listen.”

“What do you mean? What happened to him? Why did you use a fake name, and why aren’t there any records of his surgery?”

She pitched forward and buried her face in her hands. “Fuck.” 

“If he doesn’t go to the hospital soon, it’ll be too late,” Armie said. “But you already know that. So… let me help, okay? I won’t tell anyone. Just let me help.” He barely even knew Timmy, but Armie could still taste his blood on his lips. He couldn’t let him die. _He just couldn’t._

“There’s nothing you can do,” Saoirse muttered, shaking her head. 

“He wanted my advice on Friday, right? Maybe he’ll listen to me.” 

Saoirse looked up at him, and suddenly she seemed very, very small. 

*

Snow was falling softly when they left the hospital, and even though it was almost one in the morning the sky was a bright, opaque orange, the low clouds reflecting the glow of the streetlights. Saoirse led Armie to her car without a word. 

“Where are we going?” Armie asked as she started the engine. The floor was littered with receipts and food wrappers and it smelled like smoke. 

“Daniel’s place.”

Armie had no idea who Daniel was, but his place, it turned out, was close by. “Can you at least give me a rundown of what i’m walking into?” Armie asked when they pulled up outside of a slightly dilapidated duplex in the “budget student housing” corner of town. Saoirse turned her car key, and Armie’s ears rang with the sudden stillness. He gripped the folder on his lap tightly and steeled himself for whatever came next. 

“You’ll have to ask him.”

The snow had already covered the ground in a powdery layer of white. Armie turned up the collar of his coat as they walked to the door. He was still wearing his scrubs underneath, and the thin fabric didn’t provide much protection from the cold. Saoirse knocked twice. They waited. The blinds were drawn, but Armie could see shadows moving around inside. After a few seconds the door creaked open and a man’s face poked out.

“Who’s he?” A British accent, but rougher than Dev’s.

“Hammer,” Saoirse said. “He’s at JHU too. He’s going to help.” 

The guy eyed Armie suspiciously, but still opened the door. 

The place was dim and cluttered with books, clothes and blankets. It was also warm—too warm—with a stuffy, sour smell like the windows hadn’t been opened in days. The TV was playing in the corner at a low volume, the subtitles turned on, the remains of Chinese takeout scattered over the coffee table.

“You’re Daniel?” Armie asked the guy, whispering for no real reason. 

He didn’t answer, just folded his arms and stared Armie down. He turned to Saoirse. “What’s he going to do, then?” 

“I don’t know. But he found out about Timmy, and he offered to—”

“How?” Daniel snapped. 

“Timmy asked for my help,” Armie said, even though that was kind of a stretch. 

“What else do you want me to do?” Saoirse went on. “The numbers aren’t good, Dan. It’s either this, or we take him in, or…” 

Daniel shook his head vehemently. “No. _No._ We’ve been over this, Sersh—” 

“So let him try to talk to Timmy,” Saoirse said firmly. “What’ve we got to lose?” 

Daniel ran a hand over his short, cropped hair. “Fine. He’s outside.” 

Saoirse led Armie down the hallway, through the kitchen (unexpectedly clean,) to the sliding glass doors to the back patio. He could just make out Timmy’s hunched silhouette leaning against the railing, enveloped in a thick cloud of smoke. The pungent tang of cannabis filled Armie’s nostrils as soon as they stepped outside. 

“Oh. You,” Timmy said when he caught sight of Armie. He was in shadow, but when he took a toke off the joint he was holding the light briefly illuminated his face. He looked awful: hair greasy and unkempt, clothes hanging off him limply. Had he lost even more weight since Armie had seen him on Friday?

“Yeah. Me.” 

“That makes sense.”

“So this is you?” Armie held up the folder in his hand, and Timmy eyed it with disdain. “The x-rays you showed me. The blood work. That’s _you,_ right? I just want to clarify.” 

Timmy took another toke. “Yeah.” 

“Okay. _What the fuck._ Why did you have _liver_ surgery? And _where,_ because I checked the database and there’s no record of you at any hospital in the city, unless you have more than one fake name, I guess. I mean… Jesus Christ. None of this makes any sense.” 

“Sersh, do you mind?” 

Saoirse turned wordlessly, slid open the door and stepped back into the house. Timmy held out the joint to Armie. 

“No thanks. Should you even be smoking that right now?” 

He shrugged. 

“You have to go to the hospital,” Armie pressed, and Timmy laughed. 

“Nahh. That’s not gonna happen. Is that your idea of helping?” 

Armie flipped open the folder to the latest blood panel. “Have you seen this?” Timmy took the printout and studied it. The light from the kitchen window was just enough to read by. “Your liver is failing.” 

“That makes sense,” Timmy said again. He handed the paper back to Armie.

“And that doesn’t bother you?” 

Another shrug. 

“Do you have a death wish or something? Are you a drug addict?” 

“It’s funny that that’s the first thing you jump to.” 

“What else am I supposed to think? Occam’s razor, right? You got a better explanation?

Timmy took one last toke, then ground the joint into the wooden railing. He turned and fixed Armie with a penetrating stare. 

“Sometimes it’s not that easy. Sometimes the simplest explanation is the furthest from the truth.” He sighed and looked out over the dark yard, teeth worrying his bottom lip. Eventually, Armie would come to learn that this was the way Timmy looked when he was deciding how much of himself to reveal. “You’ve been in surgery before, right?” he said after a while. 

“What, like… as a patient?” 

“As a surgeon.” 

Armie shifted from one foot to another. “A couple of times.” 

“You shadowed Dr. Guadagnino.” 

“Yeah.” 

“How did it feel?” 

The question caught Armie off guard. “What?” 

Timmy’s eyes bored into him with an intensity that made Armie’s chest tight. “How did you feel when you watched him open someone up?” 

“Nervous,” Armie said. Timmy huffed. 

“Yeah, but what else?” 

Armie thought back to the day. The adrenaline. The queasy feeling in his stomach that he couldn’t quite place. Dread, or something else?

“I felt… Calm, I guess. Focused.”

_“What else?”_

Armie could still feel the quiet numbness buzzing through his bloodstream. Sick with fear and anticipation. 

“Like all of my senses were... sharpened. Like I could hear everything. Feel everything.” 

Timmy was nodding, his eyes bright. He stepped closer, so that Armie could smell the sweetness on his breath. “That’s it. You know what else makes me feel like that?” His hand moved to the sleeve of his sweater. Armie watched him push it up, up, up, revealing the neat, almost surgical lines that traversed his wrist and kept going—up his forearm, up his bicep, up underneath his sleeve. “Just this.”

Armie stepped forward and cradled Timmy’s hand in his own. He ran a finger across the scars, tracing them like embroidery. Some were thin and silver but others were deeper, darker, framed by even dots. _Suture marks._

“So you do have a death wish.” Armie let Timmy’s hand drop. “What’s that got to do with—”

“Just listen,” Timmy said. “These…” He tapped one of the darker scars, then tapped the divets in his skin from the stitches. “At first they were just necessity. But then they were practice.”

“Practice?

Timmy was watching him, waiting for him to put the pieces together. 

“Practice for what?”

“It’s better than a chicken,” Timmy said simply. 

It was like Armie had been climbing a staircase and missed a step. He blinked. He’d done his share of stitching chicken skin, sure; it was a good way to get better, because the consistency was almost the same as human flesh. But the thought of suturing _yourself…_

Armie looked down again. There were so many marks. Suddenly, blindingly, he felt a fierce swell of anger. Not towards Timmy, but towards whatever had made him this way. 

Timmy didn’t meet his eyes. “One time, when I cut too deep, I passed out and Sersh found me,” he continued. “I begged her not to take me to the hospital, and she didn’t. Just stitched me up. And then the next time, when _she_ needed help, she called me. Eventually we got more careful. We got _better._ We started stocking supplies. And after a while it wasn’t necessity anymore.It was—”

“Practice,” Armie finished, cold horror stealing over him. 

Timmy nodded. “And when we met Ansel...” 

“Ansel?” Armie asked sharply, his heart pounding. 

“See, we had this idea,” Timmy said. He looked up at the sky, picking his words carefully. “We got really good at sutures. So why couldn’t we get really good at other things, too?” 

Armie swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. Timmy kept going. 

“At first we only opened each other up, just to see if we could. And, well… We could. We healed. So we kept going...”

Armie’s skin crawled. Somewhere, deep in the back of his brain, he knew where this was going even before Timmy pulled up his shirt. The gauze looked rusty, and timmy peeled it back to reveal the incision. It was even worse than it had been on Friday: in the dimness the skin looked black. Bruised. The edges were only half healed, pulling apart in places and not knitting together like they should be. 

“Jesus,” Armie managed. “Jesus fucking Christ…”

“You were right,” Timmy said with a half smile. “It’s an infection. Just took a while to show up in the blood work...” 

Armie leaned over the railing and vomited onto the snow. He straightened up, coughing. “Who did that to you?” he whispered between gasps. “Timmy, who—?” 

But Armie already knew, even before Timmy spoke:

“Ansel took the lead, but the hepatectomy was my idea. We took turns…” 

A fresh wave of dread turned Armie’s stomach. Everything in him was telling him go to—to just _run,_ to get out of there, to call the police—but he couldn’t help asking the only question that pushed its way through his tangled, frantic thoughts: “What happened to him?” 

Timmy looked away. “It’s hard to explain.” 

“What does that mean? He threatened to expose you or something, so you butchered him?”

“Ansel knew the risks,” Timmy snapped. 

Armie took out his phone.

“What are you doing?”

“Calling 911,” Armie shot back. 

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“Oh yeah? Why? Are you going to murder me too?” 

“I know you’re sleeping with Dr. Chambers.” 

Time stood still. The snow was falling more thickly now, and the air around them felt close and claustrophobic. 

“Put the phone away,” Timmy ordered. 

Armie stared at him incredulously. “You think I’m going to keep quiet because I care about my reputation?” 

Timmy shook his head. “It’s not just _your_ reputation.”

“We’re both adults. There’s no rule against—”

“Against fucking the Dean’s wife?” 

Armie swallowed. 

“I have proof,” Timmy said. “Do you really want to risk it?” 

“So what do you want me to do?” Armie hissed. “You killed someone—” 

“It’s not that simple—”

“You’re _dying—”_

“So _help_ me,” Timmy said calmly. “Isn’t that what you came here to do?” He stepped closer, looking up at Armie through those long, dark lashes. His face was gaunt, his eyes hollow and bruised, a sickly flush spread across his cheeks. But even like that, he looked determined. And there was still something beautiful about him. 

“How do you know about me and Liz?” Armie asked quietly. His mind was racing. They had been careful, hadn’t they? 

“I told you I was watching you. You always left with her, after class. I followed you one day—I thought… I don’t know. I wanted to talk to you after she left. But you both went to her car.” He shrugged simply. 

“And you took pictures?” 

Another shrug. 

Armie leaned back against the railing and closed his eyes, trying desperately to make everything make sense. Everything Timmy was saying sounded absolutely batshit insane, and yet, somehow, the pieces fit. The dots connected. It seemed impossible that only a few hours ago Armie had been sitting in the library cafe with Dev, studying for a fucking biology test. He let out a shaky breath. “Were you planning on blackmailing me all along?”

“I wouldn’t have had to blackmail you at all if you hadn’t threatened to call the cops.” 

Armie stared down at his phone. Then, after a long moment, he slid it back into his pocket. “Okay. Fine. I’ll help you,” Armie said. “But you already know what I’m going to suggest. And you know what could go wrong.” 

Timmy’s eyes sparkled in the dimness. “I know.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you liked this, leave me a comment! If this confused or distressed you, still please leave me a comment because I need them to live! 
> 
> [Photoset](http://peaches-n-crema.tumblr.com/post/179811049352/complications-so-theyd-hooked-up-once-and-for)   
>  [Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/esonyac/playlist/6pOx4dn5rMHAkNqia81bG1?si=XUZTU2oFSye77x1mvCUF9w)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Saoirse whistled under her breath. “Well that’s a proper _deus ex machina_ if I ever saw one."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Does this make any sense? No! Do I care? Also no! We can't think about these things too deeply! 
> 
> This chapter is dedicated to Gina and Keke, who both responded with a resounding "yes" when i asked them if I should "make it gross." Also shouts out to Gina for being my beta/cheerleader and constantly validating my fragile ego in this trying time.

“That ain’t possible.”

“Then he’s fucked,” Armie said calmly. Daniel was glowering at him from across the kitchen. Beside him, Saoirse watched Timmy carefully. Timmy, who was leaning up against the counter, eyes hazy like he might pass out at any second. “If we just do a laparoscopy—”

“We can’t.”

 _“Why?”_ Armie demanded.

“We don’t have the equipment, all right?” Saoirse said calmly. “If we need to go back in, it’s the full deal.”

“We need to go back in,” Armie insisted. Daniel and Saoirse exchanged a glance. He opened the folder again and pulled out the x-rays. “You see this?” Armie pointed to the cloudy mass next to Timmy’s liver. _“That’s not right._ These were taken more than a week ago—I bet it’s worse now.”

“How do you know?” Daniel snapped. “A weird spot on an x-ray—that’s all that is. Swelling from the infection, probably.”

“No,” Armie countered. “This was there before the infection even showed up in his blood work.”

“What, then? What are you suggesting?”

“Best guess? The stitches on the liver didn’t hold and there’s been leakage. That’s causing the irritation and the infection, which is causing the crash. If we can go in and stitch it up—clean it up—the antibiotics can actually have a chance to do their thing. And If we’re lucky, the liver will bounce back.”

Daniel chewed his lip. “We can’t. He’ll bleed to death, and we don’t have enough for anymore transfusions…”

“Transfusions?” Armie asked sharply.

“We keep stores of our own blood,” Saoirse explained. “We used almost all of Timmy’s up last time, and he his counts haven’t exactly been good enough to replenish the supply…”

Armie laughed aloud. “We just need blood?”

“Why, do you know a guy?” Daniel asked, voice dripping with sarcasm.

Armie couldn’t help the grin spreading across his face. “Yeah—me. I’m a universal donor.”

Timmy’s head snapped up. Saoirse whistled under her breath. “Well that’s a proper _deus ex machina_ if I ever saw one,” she said. “You’re sure?”

“Yep; found out in first year chem when we had to use our blood as samples.”

“Even if that’s the case,” Daniel said evenly, “you couldn’t give us enough.”

“Humans can lose 15 percent of their blood volume before any serious side effects,” Armie said. “So what, that’s one litre? Two units?”

Daniel shook his head. “What if it’s not an easy fix? What if it’s not leakage and we need more time than a litre can buy us?”

“Then we call it,” Armie said decisively. “You guys accept that you have no fucking idea what you’re doing, I take him to the hospital, and you get a head start for the Canadian border.” Saoirse and Daniel exchanged another glance. Daniel looked ready to fight, but Timmy interjected before he could say anything:

“Armie’s right. Look, what have I got to lose?”

“Blood,” Saoirse said dryly. “Your life.”

Timmy waved a hand. “Who needs those? Let’s do it.”

Saoirse sighed. “Yeah, all right then. Dan?”

“Let’s hope you’re as smart as you seem to think you are,” Daniel said to Armie darkly.

Armie met his eyes without flinching. “Where are we doing this?”

*

Saoirse led him to a nondescript door just off the kitchen that he might have mistaken for a closet. She opened it, and a yawning black void stretched out before them until he flicked on the lights.

“Holy shit,” Armie as they descended the stairs. The basement was unfinished, the walls and floor draped in thick sheeting plastic. In the centre of the room stood a stainless steel operating table, surrounded by machines and IV poles. There was a tray of surgical implements in the corner, along with a sink and a cot that Armie guess was supposed to function as a makeshift hospital bed.

Armie thought about serial killers. He thought about Ansel, and wondered if this was where he’d died. He surveyed the scalpels and the store of suture material and thought about cutting Timmy open. Sewing him closed.

The ceiling shook with muffled footsteps. The sound made the basement feel smaller than it was.

Saoirse grabbed a pillow from a cupboard and put it on the metal table, like that would make it any less creepy. “Lie down,” she said, and Armie obeyed gingerly. She disappeared behind a curtain of plastic, and he could hear her rummaging around.

“How did you guys do all this?”

“Slowly,” Saoirse said from behind the curtain. “Some of it we bought, but most of it we _took,_ here and there…”

She re-appeared with an armful of supplies. Armie watched her open a needle and an iodine swab and put on a pair of black latex gloves. She was wearing an overlarge sweater, and he wondered if she had as many scars as Timmy did.

“Arm?”

He held it out for her, and she wrapped a latex tourniquet around his bicep. The chocolatey chemical smell was familiar and almost comforting—he’d practised this exact procedure countless times on a dummy arm at the hospital, and on bananas and oranges and chicken at home.

“Make a fist." Saoirse brushed her fingers over his veins, and when she had found her spot she picked up the iodine and scrubbed the area thoroughly. She opened a needle.

“Timmy told me how you started,” Armie ventured. “The sutures.”

“Yeah?” she asked, not looking up.

“How many other procedures were there?”

Her eyes flicked to his briefly, then back down. “Just a wee pinch,” she said, then slid the needle into his arm. He watched the blood travel down the tube to the bag in her hand. She hung it off a hook on the side of the table, then turned to go. “I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

“You care about him, right? About Timmy.”

Saoirse stopped. “Of course.”

“Then why do this?”

She stripped off her gloves and turned to face him. “Because Timmy wanted me to. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done because it’s what he wanted. And what Ansel wanted.”

“Ansel wanted to die?”

“Keep up, Armie,” she said coolly, “that’s what we all want.”

She left, and Armie stared up at the ceiling, trying not to think about the last person who had lain exactly where he was now.

*

Some time later, he awoke to a thud.

Armie lay very still, trying to listen for the sound of footsteps. The house was deathly quiet, and though there were no windows in the basement he had the sensation that much more than ten minutes had passed. He was freezing, his head was pounding, and the needle in his arm ached dully. _Shit—_ he hadn’t meant to fall asleep.

“Saoirse?” Armie called, but there was no answer. He sat up, casting around, and his eyes fell on the blood bags on the cart nearby. There were three, and the one still connected to his arm was full.

“Son of a bitch,” Armie muttered under his breath. He slid the needle out of his arm as delicately as he could manage, and was about to shout again when he heard another sound, this time a crash. Then silence.

Armie tried to stand up, but blackness quickly overwhelmed his vision and he had to grasp the bed for support. _Low blood pressure._ He swore loudly, which seemed to help.

By the time Armie made it up the stairs he felt like he was about to pass out. “Saoirse?” he called again; “Daniel?”

No answer. He could still see the flicker of the silent TV in the living room, eerie in the darkness. He checked his phone: almost three in the morning. A text from Liz flashed up underneath the time.

_Can we talk?_

Armie deleted it. Then, from somewhere in the back of the house, he heard a stir of movement.

The hair on the back of his neck stood up. He followed the sound, creeping carefully down the hallway past the kitchen to what he was pretty sure was the bathroom. Someone was moving around inside, judging by the shadows flickering at the bottom of closed the door.

“Hello?” Armie called quietly.

Someone swore. Then, “Armie?”

“Timmy?” Armie opened the door.

“Wait—”

“What the hell?”

Whatever Armie had been expecting, it wasn’t Timmy in his underwear, tangled in a shower curtain. He looked up at Armie glumly, and the sight was so comically out of place that Armie almost laughed. Timmy tried to get up again, but his face contorted in pain.

“Shit. Here…” Armie bent and wrapped Timmy’s arm around his shoulder, pulling him easily to his feet. Armie was weak, but Timmy was light. “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like?” Timmy muttered. “I feel like shit and I want a shower.”

The shower curtain rod had come out of its holders on the wall. Armie picked it up. “Where are Saoirse and Daniel?”

“I think they went to get supplies. Gloves and stuff. Food, maybe. I don’t know.”

“They just left you alone?”

“I’m not on my fucking deathbed yet,” Timmy said, then frowned. “Are you okay?”

Armie was having some difficulty getting the rod back in place, because every time he lifted it above his head his vision dimmed and he felt like he was going to keel over. “Not really. I fell asleep and your murder buddies fucking bled me dry. Was that the new plan? Kill me and steal my blood?”

Timmy’s expression darkened. “I told her three units was too much.”

“Yeah, well, she took four. Okay, fuck this…” Armie let the rod clatter to the ground and kicked it away. He turned to Timmy. “Come here.”

“What?”

Armie nodded at the shower. “I’ll help you. Take those off, though.”

Timmy looked at him dubiously, then sighed. He stripped off his undershirt and boxers, and when he was naked he straightened up and met Armie’s eyes defiantly. Daring him to say something about how thin he was, maybe, or how sick he looked.

And yeah. He was thin, and he did look sick: his skin was pale white with a yellowish tinge that Armie hadn’t noticed before; bruises dotted his body and the scars on his arm stood out starkly. And now Armie could see more—on his other arm, on his thighs, on his stomach. But none of those things made him ugly or grotesque.

In undergrad, Armie had taken a literature survey course where they’d read a bunch of poems by a group of writers called the Romantics. They were mostly obsessed with nature and flowers and the ocean, and Armie didn’t remember the poems so much as the offhand comment his TA had made one day about tuberculosis: how in those days, people admired the frail, delicate features of the sick and dying. How they kept themselves pale and pinched their cheeks to emulate the feverish complexion of consumption. How those who did die from the disease were admired for dying so peacefully—slipping into the otherworld quietly—instead of melting into a bloody pool of sputum like they probably did in real life. Armie hadn’t thought about all this in years, but it came back to him now looking at Timmy. There was something timeless about his features; something romantic and delicate, reminiscent of a poet or an artist who’d been fated to die before his time.

Armie turned on the shower and helped Timmy under the stream.

“Fuck, that feels good,” Timmy sighed as soon as the water touched his skin. Armie passed him the shampoo, but Timmy’s fingers didn’t seem to want to work very well and he could barely get the cap off. When he finally did, he couldn’t reach up towards his hair without wincing.

“Let me,” Armie said. Timmy shot him a suspicious look, and Armie raised an eyebrow. “What? You’re okay with everything else but letting me wash your hair is too much?” He took the shampoo and squeezed a bit into his hand. Timmy leaned his head back and Armie started massaging it into his hair.

“You can come in if you want,” Timmy said quietly. The water was getting everywhere and Armie’s shirt was already soaked through. He was also still fucking freezing, and the idea of a hot shower didn’t sound half bad.

“You’re sure?”

Timmy nodded.

Armie peeled off his wet scrubs. Timmy watched him openly, suds dripping down his face. There was something dark and resigned in his expression.

“What?” Armie asked, suddenly self conscious. Timmy looked away.

“Nothing. It’s just kind of hard when I feel like fucking Gollum and you look like a Greek god or something.”

Armie smiled. He stepped into the shower. The water was scalding in the best way, and he immediately felt the life returning to his limbs. “C’mere,” he said. Timmy turned back around and Armie resumed washing his hair. “And you don’t look like Gollum.”

Timmy’s mouth twitched. “That’s nice of you. It’s not true, but it’s still nice.”

“I’m serious. You’re…” He hesitated, because he’d been about to say _beautiful_ but on second thought he wasn’t sure if Timmy would consider that a compliment or not. He just cleared his throat instead. Timmy didn’t seem to notice. His eyes were closed, and as Armie massaged the shampoo through his thick (extremely soft) hair, the tense line of Timmy’s shoulders relaxed.

“Feels nice,” he mumbled.

“Good.” Armie tried to keep his distance, but they were still close enough that Timmy’s back was almost touching his chest (not to mention that his ass was almost touching Armie’s cock, but this was neither the time nor the place to be thinking about those kinds of things). It was weird; Armie barely knew Timmy at all, but after everything that had happened in the last few days being naked like this felt strangely natural.

Armie stood back and Timmy rinsed off the suds. They turned a faint pink as they ran down his body.

“Does it hurt a lot?” Armie asked.

“Only when I move wrong. But I took some oxy. Or, well. A _lot_ of oxy, I guess.”

“How’d you get oxy?”

Timmy laughed and tipped his head back under the water. “It’s not hard, dude. And Dan works at the pharmacy, so...”

“That must come in handy.”

Timmy smirked. “Yeah. That’s his thing. Saoirse’s thing is blood, mostly, but she does other stuff too...”

“And what’s your thing?” Armie picked up the conditioner and they resumed their earlier position. This time, though, Timmy stood closer.

“Same as yours. Did you always want to be a surgeon?”

“Not always,” Armie said. He tried not to think about what Timmy’s mouth felt like. He reminded himself that Timmy was sick—Timmy was _dying,_ probably. Or he _would_ die if they didn’t do something soon. Armie focused on the scars, on the bruises, on the light red water swirling around the drain, but for those things just made him want to be closer. It was a strange feeling: fierce and tender, possessive and protective all at once.

Timmy rinsed again and they got out. There was a comb beside the sink, and without asking Armie grabbed it and started picking through Timmy’s curls. The bathroom was thick with steam, the mirror fogged, and Timmy leaned back against Armie’s chest for support. They stood like that for what felt like a long time; longer than it took for Armie to detangle Timmy’s curls. After a while he wasn’t really doing anything anymore, just running the comb absently through Timmy’s hair, lost in his own thoughts. Lost in the closeness.

“Are you mad at me?” Timmy asked quietly. He sounded dreamy. Half asleep.

Armie brushed a sopping curl back from Timmy’s forehead. “Kind of, yeah.”

“I’m sorry for dragging you into this.”

Armie sighed. “I don’t know if we can do it, Timmy. You can still go to the hospital…”

Timmy’s head shook. Armie couldn’t see his face, but when he spoke his voice was low and strained: “I can’t. I can’t do that to Dan and Saoirse. Don’t you get it? _I did this._ I put myself here. This is my fault. This whole thing was _my_ stupid fucking idea. Me, Ansel, it’s my fault—”

“Stop.” Armie put his hands on Timmy’s shoulders and spun him around. Timmy looked up at him with wide, fearful eyes. “Timmy, stop. I don’t care about that. I just want you to be okay—”

“I don’t want to die,” Timmy said, and he sounded so small and scared and broken that Armie couldn’t do anything but kiss him.

Timmy’s hands encircled Armie quickly, pulling him close. His mouth tasted like mint and copper and bile, and the combination made Armie’s stomach clench. Dread and arousal coiled in his gut, and he was still lightheaded but he kissed Timmy deeper anyways; kissed him harder, pushed him back up against the bathroom sink so that he gasped into Armie’s mouth.

And yeah, maybe Armie _was_ mad. He wouldn’t be here if Timmy hadn’t waited for him after class. Hadn’t brought Armie back to his room. Hadn’t watched him, threatened him; hadn’t been so reckless in the first place. So Armie’s mind was white noise and fear and _anger,_ and when Timmy dug his fingers into Armie’s back and dragged his teeth along Armie’s bottom lip he responded in kind.

He gripped Timmy by the arms and lifted him onto the counter so that he was pressed back against the mirror; dug his nails into the scars on Timmy’s thighs. He felt Timmy tense—heard his breath catch in pain—but Armie didn’t stop and Timmy didn’t ask him to. He seemed to relish the roughness, because the rougher Armie got the tighter Timmy held him. Armie reached between his legs, but his cock was mostly soft so Armie moved lower; spat in his hand and slid his fingers inside him. Timmy buried his face in Armie’s neck, stifling his moans in Armie’s damp skin. Armie hooked his arm under Timmy’s leg and pushed it up to his chest. He hated how the went straight to Armie’s cock.

He kissed Timmy again as he pushed his cock inside him; worked himself in until their skin was flush and his whole body prickled with pleasure and exertion. Timmy moved as much as he could, twitching his hips to meet Armie’s thrusts, clawing at his back for support.

“I’m sorry,” Timmy said into his neck; “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” repeating the words like a mantra as Armie fucked him. Armie ran his hands down Timmy’s sides, up his stomach, and he’d almost forgotten about the incision until he felt it under his fingers, sticky and rough. Timmy shuddered and made a choking sound and Armie pressed until he felt wetness; fucked Timmy deeper until he couldn’t hold back anymore. He came with a gasp, the orgasm crashing over him in waves. Armie kissed Timmy again; kept kissing him until the warmth faded and they were both just cold and wet and shivering.

*

Armie wrapped Timmy in a towel and helped him across the hall to the bedroom, which he guessed was probably a spare judging by the bare walls and haphazard boxes of miscellaneous medical supplies stacked to the ceiling. There was an old bicycle in one corner across from a twin bed, which Timmy sat on stiffly while Armie helped him back into his clothes.

“You okay?” Armie asked as he pulled his own scrubs back on.

“Yeah,” he said, but his face was pinched and grey and he had a faraway look in his eyes. “I think the stuff I took wore off.”

“Do you have more?”

Timmy nodded. “Kitchen counter.”

The small blue container sat innocuously exactly where Timmy had said, right next to the folder with his x-rays and blood panels. Armie pocketed it and poured himself a glass of water. He stared out the kitchen window as he drank; the snow had stopped, but the backyard was blanketed in nearly a foot of white. In the distance, Armie thought he could hear the soft crunch of snow under tires.

Back in the bedroom, he found Timmy leaning back against the headboard with his eyes closed. Armie sat down next to him as softly as he could.

“Timmy.”

He didn’t stir. His mouth was slightly open, and Armie could see dried blood on his lips. _“Timmy,”_ he said again.

Timmy opened his eyes, but he seemed to be having trouble focusing on Armie’s face. He coughed. “I didn’t take pictures.”

“What?”

“I didn’t take any pictures of you and Dr. Chambers. ‘M sorry I lied…” His eyelids drooped, and sudden panic gripped Armie by the throat.

“Timmy? Hey. _Hey._ Don’t go to sleep, okay?” Armie tried to pull Timmy upright but he coughed again, spattering Armie with dark black blood, and it was the first time all over again only _worse_ because Timmy wasn't opening his eyes no matter how hard Armie shook him, his head lolling back and forth like a rag doll. 

So Armie did the only thing he could think of: he yelled. For Daniel, for Saoirse, for a neighbour nearby who might hear him and call the police to take Timmy to the hospital and the rest of them to jail.

 _Footsteps._ The door flew open. Saoirse stared down at them and Armie watched her face drain of all colour.

“What did you do?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry!
> 
> [Photoset](http://peaches-n-crema.tumblr.com/post/179811049352/complications-so-theyd-hooked-up-once-and-for)  
> [Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/esonyac/playlist/6pOx4dn5rMHAkNqia81bG1?si=XUZTU2oFSye77x1mvCUF9w) (new songs added)


	5. Chapter 5

“Get. Out.” 

“I’m sorry,” Armie said for what must have been the millionth time. His scrubs were still wet and stained with dark splotches of Timmy’s blood. Timmy, who now lay on the metal operating table in Daniel and Saoirse’s insane murder basement, eyes flickering, drifting in and out of consciousness. 

“Let me help,” Armie insisted, because he had to do _something_ to ease the guilt and panic sitting on his chest like a rock. 

“You’ve done enough, thanks,” Saoirse said over her shoulder. She was darting around the room, flicking on switches and plugging in machines. 

Daniel already had a cuff on Timmy’s arm. “Sersh, just chill for a second—”

She rounded on him. She was practically shaking with rage, her eyes wild and half crazed. “Don’t you fucking _dare,_ Dan—”

“Look, we need him. You can’t operate by yourself.” 

“I’ll do whatever you tell me to,” Armie said.

Her nostrils flared, but whether she liked it or not, she seemed to agree with Daniel. She turned to Armie. “Fine. Wash up.”

Armie nodded. His head was pounding again and his thoughts were scattered, but Saoirse’s order gave him something to focus on. There was a sink in the corner of the room. As he scrubbed his hands and arms (starting at his hands, working up to his elbows, counting to sixty twice in his head), Daniel spoke to Saoirse in a low voice behind him. The sound seemed muffled and far away, tuning in and out with the rush of the water and the ringing in his ears. 

“Blood pressure’s okay, but it won’t be soon. I’m going to set him up with a saline drip. If he starts to crash we should have enough blood to hold us for a little bit at least. Timmy, can you hear me?”

Armie looked over his shoulder. He could just see Timmy’s damp curls move as he nodded. Daniel worked quickly as he spoke, unspooling a mess of wires and pads connected to a monitor. He stuck the pads on Timmy’s chest. 

“We’re going to do the surgery now, like we talked about.”

Another nod.

“And you know what could happen?”

Timmy murmured something, and Daniel leaned down to listen. When he straightened back up his face was ashen. 

“Right,” he said, his voice steady. “IV catheter going in.” 

Armie snapped on a pair of gloves as he came to stand beside the operating table. Timmy’s eyes drifted towards him, and smiled dreamily. 

Daniel held an oxygen mask to his face with one hand. With the other, he depressed the plunger on a large syringe hooked up to the IV. “Count backwards from one hundred.”

“One hundred,” Timmy mumbled, and then his eyes fluttered closed. His muscles slackened, and Armie marvelled at the change that came over his face. He leaned down so that his face was level with Timmy’s, watching the way his eyelashes fluttered against his cheeks and his breath fogged the mask. Maybe it was cliche, but he looked, well... peaceful. 

Saoirse cut away his t-shirt and covered him with blankets and plastic to keep him warm while they worked, securing the material around his limbs while Daniel taped his eyelids shut. He reached into a nearby drawer and pulled out a curved metal object.

“A little help?” he said, and Armie held Timmy’s head steady as Daniel used the device to insert a plastic tube in Timmy’s throat. Once it was in place Daniel seemed to relax: the medication he’d used to put Timmy under would wear off in a few minutes, but now the tube would deliver anaesthetic gas straight to Timmy’s lungs, keeping him asleep. The intubation also served the dual purpose, Armie supposed, of making sure Timmy didn’t drown in his own blood. 

Saoirse put on a mask, then handed one to Armie and Daniel each. Her hands were already gloved and ready; (when had she done that?) the square window of Timmy’s abdomen showing through the surgical drapes was already stained dark orange by iodine. 

She picked up a scalpel. 

“Wait,” Armie blurted out. Saoirse froze. “Counts?” 

“We don’t have time for bloody _counts,”_ she hissed. “I’m going to open the old incision.”

Armie sighed in frustration. _This was fucked up on so many levels._ He grabbed a sponge, positioning himself across from Saoirse. Daniel stood at Timmy’s head, monitoring the machines, ready to adjust medications as needed.

“Okay,” Saoirse said. She brought the scalpel down, but the closer she got to Timmy’s skin, the more her hand shook. _“Christ,”_ she muttered. She closed her eyes and shook her head, like she was trying to clear something away from her eyes. She tried again, but as soon as the blade touched Timmy’s stomach her hand shook so violently she had to pull it away again. 

“Sersh?” Daniel said uncertainly. 

“I’m fine,” she said, but her breath was coming in gasps. She tried one more time. Armie watched as the blade pierced Timmy’s flesh and immediately jittered off course. 

Armie grabbed her by the wrist before she could do anymore damage, but Saoirse wrenched herself free from his grip. “I can do this,” she said through gritted teeth. 

“No you can’t. Fucking look at yourself.”

“He’s right, Sersh,” Daniel said quietly. 

“Then _you_ do it,” she shot back at him. She looked close to tears. 

Daniel was shaking his head. “You know I can't. I gotta keep an eye on these...”

“I can,” Armie said. “I can do it.” He was surprised at how calm he sounded. 

For a minute Saoirse seemed like she was going to fight him, but Armie could see the fear in her eyes. She nodded slowly and handed him the scalpel. It felt cold and light in Armie’s hand, more like a pen then a blade. He closed his eyes and tried to steady himself.

 _This was insane._ Timmy was insane, and Saoirse, and Daniel, and _especially_ Armie, because why else would he be here? Why else would he be standing here in a fucking murder basement over Timmy’s unconscious body holding a fucking _scalpel?_

 _So what?_ said a small voice in the back of his head. 

So what. 

Armie looked down at his hands. _Steady._ The panic in his mind had gone, and all that remained was cold, focused static, like falling snow. A kind of clarity that made him feel like something more than human.

_He could do this. _Not only that—he _wanted_ to do this. __

__Armie brought the scalpel to the small nick Saoirse had made. The swollen flesh gave way easily, barely putting up any resistance as he slid the blade along the old incision. Blood pounded in Armie’s ears, drowning out all other sounds and thoughts as he cut deeper, deeper, through skin and barely-healed muscle and fascia._ _

____

When Armie thought back to it later, he didn’t remember much—just flashes: the dark purple blood that oozed out of the incision, too much for Saoirse’s sponge. The smell of iodine and infection like sour pennies. The feeling of cutting, but more than that, the sound: sticky and slick. Meat under a knife. The sensation of being _inside,_ more intimate than sex; the pulse of viscera under the harsh halogen lights. 

____

And then there it was: the mass over Timmy’s liver, a pulpy object about the size of a mandarin orange, encased in slime and half-formed scar tissue. 

____

_What the fuck?_ someone said, but Armie couldn’t be sure who. Maybe it was him. Saoirse held Timmy’s insides out of the way of his blade as he cut it free, carefully, detaching the dying tissue from the _thing._

____

By the time they got it out, Armie’s gloves were slick with blood and his scrubs were sopping. He could feel it under his feet, too; he hadn’t put on shoes. 

____

Armie held the thing up to the light. He’d nicked it in places, and through the scar tissue something synthetic poked out. 

____

“Holy shit,” Armie said. He laughed. Out of relief, maybe, but also out of sheer disbelief. He looked down at Timmy’s limp body, splayed out on the cold metal table.

____

_How the fuck had they gotten here?_

____

So they'd hooked up once, and for some reason that had made Timmy trust Armie enough to ask for his help. But if someone had told Armie that night that one day he would be standing over a makeshift operating table, up to his elbows in blood and holding the surgical sponge he had just pulled out of Timmy’s abdomen, he would have laughed in that person's face.

____

Life was kind of funny that way.

____

*

____

Snow fell. The sun rose. Armie washed off the blood and gore and sat beside Timmy’s bedside in the crowded spare room, watching him breathe. 

____

_You missed your exam,_ Dr. Chambers texted him. Then, a few minutes later, _Is everything okay?_

____

_Sorry. Sick._

____

_What’s wrong?_ came the response quickly. Armie turned his phone off. Everything that wasn’t Timmy seemed inconsequential.

____

*

____

He’d just started to doze when Timmy finally opened his eyes. 

____

“Armie?” he croaked, voice barely a whisper. It was 3pm and the sun was already going down, painting the room a cool, soothing blue. 

____

Armie sat bolt upright. “Hey. You’re awake. How do you feel?” 

____

“Thirsty.”

____

Armie laughed in relief. He helped Timmy upright to take a sip of water from the glass beside his bed. “How’s the pain?” 

____

“Fine. Good, actually.” 

____

“Probably the morphine.” 

____

Timmy’s eyes drifted to the IV stand beside his bed. “Where're Sersh and Dan?” 

____

"I told them to go get some rest, but they're around." 

____

"What happened?"

____

Armie reached into his pocket and pulled out a small container. Timmy took it stiffly, studying the bloody object inside. 

____

“Surgical sponge,” Armie said. “Must’ve got left behind during the first procedure. Do you guys do counts?” Most operating rooms had a designated person to count all the tools and implements that could accidentally get left behind. Of course, Timmy, Saoirse, and Daniel’s murder basement was not exactly _most_ operating rooms. 

____

“Sometimes,” Timmy muttered. “Shit...” 

____

“Yeah,” Armie said. “Classic retained foreign body: fine for a while, but eventually it prompted an immune response. That led to all your initial symptoms: pain, fever, rash. Then it got infected. Liver function started to decline, which led to the bleeding and vomiting and everything else. It was a mess in there. We took out the necrotic tissue, which leaves you with about half a liver. If everything from this point forward goes perfectly, there’s a chance it could bounce back fully.”

____

“Not bad,” Timmy said. He held the container up to the light. “So Saoirse just missed it during the first exploratory.”

____

“Well, it was covered tissue; it would have been _easy_ to miss. And honestly... I don’t think she was very thorough.” 

____

“What do you mean?”

____

Armie hesitated. “She, uh. Kind of freaked out last night. Couldn’t go through with the surgery. So... I did it.” 

____

“Oh.” 

____

“Yeah.” Armie looked down absently, flexing his hands, thinking of how Timmy’s flesh felt under his knife. “Is that okay?” 

____

“I don’t know,” Timmy said. He was watching Armie intently. “Is it? I mean… _Was_ it? I never wanted you to have to—”

____

“Yeah. It was. _Better_ than okay.” 

____

Timmy’s eyes widened. _“Better than okay,”_ he repeated, more to himself than to Armie. “Okay. Uhm.” He laughed and leaned back against the headboard. He still looked awful, but the colour was already starting to return to his cheeks and all the fluids made his face look fuller. After a minute, he sighed. “Do you still want to know what happened to Ansel?” 

____

Truthfully, Armie had almost forgotten about him altogether. He nodded. 

____

“I wasn’t lying when I said we didn’t kill him. I know you think we’re crazy, and I’m not gonna argue with that. Normal people don’t do this shit for fun, you know? We’re all... We have a lot of fucking issues.” 

____

“Yeah, I got that,” Armie said dryly. The corner of Timmy’s mouth twitched. 

____

“Okay, so. Ansel.” 

____

He took a deep breath, and then he told Armie everything: how he’d met Ansel in a school-run group therapy session; how they’d become close, bonding over all the things they knew they should stay away from until they both dropped out of the program and focused their energy on school and their secret surgery club instead of getting better. How, after an an appendectomy apiece, they’d set their sights on another major surgery; how Ansel wanted to have another _keepsake,_ so Timmy suggested the liver, because as long as they didn’t take too much it might grow back.

____

But Timmy also told Armie how Ansel’s moods swung violently. How sometimes he wouldn’t sleep for days at a time, and other times he couldn’t get out of bed. How he was always self-medicating; taking different pills in different doses to try and _feel_ or _not feel_ depending on the day. “I do that stuff too,” Timmy said, “but not to the same extent, you know?” 

____

Timmy told him how excited Ansel was when the first surgery—Timmy’s surgery—was a so-called success; how he insisted on going under the knife himself sooner then they’d planned. How they’d prepared meticulously, and how the surgery went off without a hitch until halfway through, when Ansel flatlined. 

____

“We’d just started on the liver. We tried to resuscitate, but… fuck.” He shook his head. “It was a fucking mess.” 

____

“What happened?” Armie asked quietly. “Did he bleed out?”

____

Timmy let out a long breath. “Well at the time, we had no fucking clue. But obviously an autopsy was kinda out of the question…” 

____

“Oh, sure,” Armie said. “Obviously.” 

____

“And we’d already cut him open...” 

____

“Uh huh.” 

____

“So… we got rid of the evidence.” Timmy was picking at a scratch in the lid of the container. 

____

“Meaning, you made it look like murder?” 

____

Timmy shrugged matter-of-factly, like this was the only obvious solution. “See, we had this deal: that if anything went wrong, we would do whatever it took to save ourselves. To make it look like an accident, or like it was someone else. Ansel’s idea, not mine,” he added at the look of horror on Armie’s face.

____

“Jesus,” Armie whispered. “Okay. _Okay._ Death cult. That’s fine. That makes sense. So you cremated him in his car.”

____

Timmy shrugged again. “But not before we took a blood sample. And when we ran a toxicology report, we found out how he died…” Timmy shook his head with a humourless laugh. “He took fucking barbiturates before he went under.” 

____

Armie blinked. “How did he manage to get those?” 

____

“He had connections, I guess. I already knew he took all that stuff for fun… he even liked _propofol_ —we had to give him a huge dose just to get him under in the first place. But there was way too much in his system to be a coincidence. Not enough to kill him on its own, maybe, but with everything else...” 

____

Timmy trailed off, and Armie let the silence grow as he processed this information. “You think he knew what he was doing?” 

____

“Honestly? I don’t know. But a couple weeks later, when the police came to talk to us, we found out he’d been failing all his classes.” 

____

Armie frowned. “I thought he was a star student.” 

____

“He _was,”_ Timmy said slowly. “But he was always up and down. Usually he could pull himself up and scrape through, but not this time. They were putting him on academic suspension.” 

____

“Jesus.”

____

“Yeah.”

____

"So, what? Assisted suicide? Kind of fucked up to make you guys deal with that."

____

“I guess. But you know, I don’t think he thought we’d get as far as the actual surgery; he probably thought we’d put him under and—” he snapped his fingers— “that would be it. Then we’d just have to set him up in his room with a needle. He just got the timing wrong.”

____

“He’s lucky he didn’t wake up fucking braindead.” 

____

“Probably, yeah.”

____

The light in the room was fading quickly, plunging them into darkness. Timmy sighed. “You know, when everything started going to shit, it felt like karma. Or, I don’t know... Punishment for being so stupid. I should be dead.” He wasn’t meeting Armie’s eyes, and Armie could hear the pain in his voice. “I’m sorry about everything.” He was still fiddling absently with the plastic container, and without thinking Armie covered Timmy’s hands with his own. Timmy looked up at him in surprise, but before he could say anything Armie kissed him. 

____

“I’m not,” he said quietly when they parted. 

____

Timmy’s breath was soft on his lips. “Should I be worried?” 

____

It was an odd question, yet somehow it made perfect sense. Armie thought for a minute. He brushed his thumb over the back of Timmy’s smooth, cold hand, and felt his breath hitch. 

____

“Next time, we’re doing fucking counts.” 

____

“Next time,” Timmy said. They kissed again, and all Armie could taste was blood. 

____


	6. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I lied. There's always an epilogue.

“How did you do?”

“Aced that shit.” 

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m _not!”_ Timmy cackled, ducking out of the way of Armie’s snowball.

“You didn’t even study!” Armie practically shouted. “Sorry,” he added as a woman walking by shot him a dirty look. He bent to scoop up another handful of snow, but before he could throw it Timmy’s retaliation caught him full in the side of the face. “Oh, fuck you…”

“Truce, truce!” Timmy cried as Armie rushed him. 

Armie kissed him instead. “Don’t start shit you can’t finish,” he growled, then dumped the half-melted snow on Timmy’s head.

*

They grabbed coffee (and a chocolate chip muffin for Timmy) from a nearby cafe and sat on a bench overlooking the Beach, which was really just the colloquial name for the grassy field under the clocktower. It was a good place to people-watch, even though it was the last day of exams and most students had left for the holidays. 

Only a month later, Timmy was already further in his recovery than any of them had expected, though any kind of physical exertion still took a lot out of him. So he’d been using a cane, which led to a lot of bad _House_ references and a lot of jokes about switching from oxy to Vicodin. Timmy leaned it against the bench and edged closer to Armie so that their shoulders were touching. 

“If you get higher than me in fucking _bio_ I’m going to lose it,” Armie muttered. “You missed like, a week of lectures. How is that possible?”

Timmy hummed. “I don’t know. I’m just _that_ good, I guess?” He took a bite of his muffin, and Armie’s stomach growled loudly. 

“You’re killing me with that,” he sighed. 

“Sorry. How long’s it been?” 

Armie looked at his phone. “Four hours.” 

“Almost there.” Timmy put the muffin down and twined their fingers together. Snow was falling again, and Armie watched the flakes settle and melt on his damp hair. 

“Don’t look now,” Timmy said under his breath, “but Dr. Chambers is waving at you.” 

“Shit,” Armie said as she approached. He cleared his throat and sat up a little straighter. “Hey, professor.” 

“Mr. Hammer,” Dr. Chambers said. “Mr. Chalamet. How are you feeling?” 

“Oh, great,” Timmy said, flashing a warm smile. “Thanks for the extension.” 

“Of course. Will you be going home for the break?” 

“Nope,” Armie said. “Staying in town, actually. Timmy too.”

“I see.” Her eyes flicked back and forth between them, and Armie could practically _feel_ the effort she had to exert not to openly stare at their joined hands. 

“Great exam, by the way,” Timmy said, breaking the awkward silence. “Some really killer, uh. Questions.”

Dr. Chambers blinked. “Oh. Well, thank you. Mr. Hammer…” 

She hesitated, her eyes searching. Armie wondered how closely she’d been watching him. Had she seen him come into class with Timmy these past few weeks? Had she seen _more_ than that? That same old shame still sat in the back of his mind, and under her gaze it flared up again like a persistent headache. Then Timmy shifted, and Armie felt the heat of his body. 

He smiled. “Happy holidays, Liz.” 

She shook herself. “And to you. Well, I better…” She gestured vaguely, then nodded and turned on her heel. Armie watched her walk away with a strange kind of satisfaction. Whatever he and Timmy had felt _right_ in a way that he and Liz never did. They’d been physical, sure, but they’d never shared much more than a hollow kind of need. Things were better now.

Timmy waited until she was out of earshot before he spoke. “We should get going. Dan will have everything ready by now.”

Armie nodded. Liz’s black coat was a receding blur on the other side of the Beach, stark against the snow. 

“You nervous?” Timmy asked.

“Nah,” Armie said, even though he already felt woozy with adrenaline. “Just like going to sleep, right?” 

The corners of Timmy’s mouth twitched. He looked up to the sky, face bright and open and pale white like the clouds, and Armie thought he’d never seen anyone look quite so alive. 

“Yeah,” he said. “Something like that.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :) 
> 
> Thanks for sticking with the weirdness! I really appreciate all the nice (and bewildered) comments; they mean the world and sustain me, etc etc. :') Hopefully this story was horrifying in the right ways. 
> 
> Lastly, another huge thanks to Gina, who has been an amazing support throughout this whole process. ❤️
> 
> [Photoset](http://peaches-n-crema.tumblr.com/post/179811049352/complications-so-theyd-hooked-up-once-and-for)   
>  [Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/esonyac/playlist/6pOx4dn5rMHAkNqia81bG1?si=XUZTU2oFSye77x1mvCUF9w)


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